Breaking Down Barriers

Actress Elpidia Carrillo was in the middle of labor when she got a call--a well-known director wanted to audition her for his movie. But considering her situation, she didn’t return the phone call. It was not until she gave birth and hospital staff insisted she take the call that she realized what was going on.

“Where have you been? We’ve been calling you all night!” her agent hollered at her.

“I’ve been busy! I was giving birth!” she answered. Unfazed, her agent told her British director Ken Loach wanted to audition her for his latest film, “Bread and Roses.”

But, to her agent’s dismay, she said no. “I said, ‘I am gigantic! I can’t meet a director like this!’ ”

But Loach would not take no for an answer.

Carrillo recalls her agent telling Loach’s camp that she was overweight and had just given birth--and they said that was “perfect.” Four days after the birth, she auditioned and was offered the part.

“Bread and Roses,” based on the real-life story of the Los Angeles Justice for Janitors union organizing campaign in the early 1990s, opened Friday. The film tells the fictional story of two sisters, Rosa (Carrillo’s character) and her younger sibling Maya (Pilar Padilla), who trekked into the United States illegally in hopes of finding a better future. They find jobs as janitors, working for pathetic wages, cleaning offices and bathrooms in some of Los Angeles’ wealthiest corporate high-rises--including those of Hollywood studios.

The sisters soon find themselves at odds with each other, when Maya decides to join the unionizing campaign, while the older Rosa is fearful of losing her job and being unable to provide for her family.

The theme is perfectly suited for Loach, who has made a name for himself chronicling the lives and struggles of the working class. Loach cast some real-life janitors as extras to give the film a more realistic touch. Although he had not seen any of her past films, Loach said he knew from her first audition that Carrillo would be perfect for the part.

“There is a warmth and generosity about her that is very touching,” said Loach. “We needed someone who you would believe had a very tough time and had made a big sacrifice for her family and who was carrying the burden of being quite badly damaged as a person when she was young. [Rosa] was determined to protect her family and make sure the things that had happened to her would not be passed on to the next generation.”

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The experience of working with Loach was unlike any she’d ever had, the 38-year-old Carrillo said. He is very vague about the character’s motivation and allows the actors to come to their conclusions through their own research. In Carrillo’s case, she was assigned to go to Mexico City to interview a slum-dwelling family. She then spent several months in Tijuana interviewing young women who work in the maquiladoras (factories) on the border. The most harrowing experience came when she interviewed prostitutes in Tijuana’s red-light district.

“It was horrible,” she said. “I had to talk to these girls and ask them really awful questions like, ‘How many men do you bed in one night? What type of guys do you like? Do you wear condoms? Do you have a family?’ All of them were between 15 and 19 years old. It was so depressing.”

But Loach never explained why she had to do this research. It was not a part of the script. It was not until they were filming that Carrillo understood how useful this background was to bringing out the emotion in her character.

“I understood that this character would kill, if necessary, to provide for her family,” she said.

But Carrillo’s own life story is one of hardship. Carrillo was one of the youngest of 11 siblings in Michoacan, Mexico. Her mother could not provide for her family, so Carrillo and some of her siblings were sent away to relatives’ homes. At a young age, Carrillo knew she would need to fend for herself. She thought acting in movies would be a good way to make money and she started auditioning on her own. By 13, she was a working actress with small roles in some Mexican films.

But she was ambitious and moved to Los Angeles where she was cast as a teenager in her first American production, “The Border” (1982), with Jack Nicholson.

Although it sounds like a dream, coming to Hollywood actually created its own challenges. When Carrillo tried to return to Mexico for auditions, she found most directors had lost interest in her. They taunted her, saying if she was such a big Hollywood star, why didn’t she just stay north of the border.

And Hollywood wasn’t exactly knocking down her door. Nearly every part she was offered was that of a maid, prostitute or Spanish-speaking nanny. Even though her English is virtually accentless and she has lived here more than 20 years, being offered stereotypical roles is a problem that has lingered throughout her career. The reasons are mainly aesthetic. A delicately featured, attractive woman, Carrillo has almond-shaped brown eyes framed by her round, dark face.

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She finds herself in the same situation as other “ethnic”-looking actresses like Elizabeth Pena (“Lone Star”) and even Salma Hayek, who has had a hard time breaking out of the “hot and spicy,” Latin-girl mold.

“It’s been very, very hard,” Carrillo says with a sigh. “People say, ‘Wow! You should be so happy you are making a movie with Richard Gere [“Beyond the Limit,” in 1983] or Jack Nicholson.’ But I haven’t been really happy. . . . My impression of Americans [as a child] was that they were all bad and they thought they were superior to you. So when they kept giving me roles where they were the superior ones and I was inferior and they would rescue me from my troubles . . . [it] made me ashamed of the roles I got.”

Her looks have also held her back in Mexico, where indigenous-looking actors are also limited in the roles they are offered. It’s well known in Mexico that producers and directors prefer lighter-skinned actors.

Knowing that complex and interesting roles are rare, Carrillo is currently writing a screenplay with writer-director Rodrigo Garcia (“Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her”) about two women and their lifelong friendship. “Bread and Roses,” she noted, also revolves around the relationship of two women.

“These are two very strong women who have had to struggle in life,” she said. “It was also a super experience to work with Ken and to work with people who have never worked in film. It was great to feel their desire and passion.”